When Life Imitates Art – A Kid Story

Remember that scene in A Christmas Story where they talk Ralpie’s friend into sticking his tongue to the flagpole?

Yeah, my six year old son LoudBoy did that today. The next door neighbor girl was having “fun” sticking her tongue to the small metal chain on the swing, and being able to pull it off, so the other kids started doing similar things. LoudBoy went big and stuck it to the swingset support pole and it stuck pretty well, much more so than the thin swing chain. Unlike the movie, he got his tongue off without the fire department, but ripped some skin off of his tongue. When I saw him, it had just happened, his tongue was bleeding a little and he had gauze on it trying to get it to stop.

I guess we should have watched the movie over the holidays to prevent such things. When we got home, I showed him the clip, he thought it was cool. [a quick aside, I learned that for the scene in the movie, they didn’t really let the kid stick his tongue to the cold pole. Instead, they had a vacuum hose and a hole in the tube so his tongue would “stick” but could be released upon stopping the suction]

Chalk it up to a lesson learned. Should be a funny story as he gets older.